


Thrown Away But Not Forgotten

by cthulhuraejepsen



Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-26
Updated: 2016-05-26
Packaged: 2018-07-10 10:13:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6979162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cthulhuraejepsen/pseuds/cthulhuraejepsen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Submission for May's /r/rational challenge, "Plane of Garbage". Four adventurers land on the plane of garbage, but not all is as it seems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thrown Away But Not Forgotten

The First Extraplanar Expeditionary Team stood at the base of the mountain of chairs and stared up the slope. It was taller than any mountain any of them had seen, and Brathick had been born in the dwarven cities of the Spine of the World.

“So,” said Elnor. He cleared his throat. “It would appear that this plane has some sort of mechanism which … groups … certain objects that come in from the prime material.”

“How?” asked Branthick. “No one’s seen any garbage come in yet. Do you suppose the garbage just lands in piles?”

“The alternate explanation is perhaps more frightening,” said Trollop. The halfling scratched her chin. “If there’s some entity responsible for garbage sorting, I’d hate to imagine what kind of power it wields. It might see us as garbage. I do wonder where it would sort us.”

The fourth member of their group, a half-orc soldier by the name of Krunk who had been sent along for their protection, grunted. No one was sure whether that meant that he would fight it off or whether he was simply resigned to his fate.

“These chairs are all the same,” said Elnor. He cast a quick telekinesis spell that pulled three different chairs from various parts of the slope. They turned in the air in front of him as he inspected them. “I don’t just mean of the same type, they are exactly identical, down to the wood grain and the scuff marks. Does this place have repeating garbage?” Elnor was an elf, and thus possessed of exceptionally keen senses, which he had enhanced to considerable degree with various magical artifacts and enchantments. “There are many more chairs just like it in this pile.”

“I can answer that one,” said Branthick. He was the ground historian; while dwarves were known for their mining, Branthick had spent the better part of two hundred years reading by candlelight in the great libraries of the world. “Long ago, there was a school of magic called the Gift, a simple hereditary system with static but infinitely usable command words. There were perhaps a hundred words in total, so a hundred spells. One of them created a chair, always the same one. The wizards with the Gift thought nothing of repeating the word whenever they needed somewhere to sit, but they would also say the word when they needed firewood. There were even chair-houses, built entirely with the same summoned chair, though they were reserved for the lower classes. When the wizards no longer needed their chairs, they would say a different word, which removed non-living material. I suppose now we know where that ended up. Of course, not all of these chairs are those chairs, so that still leaves us with the sorting question.”

“Hrm,” Elnor said. “So we should suppose that the landscape will be sorted in some conceptual manner, and further suppose that each individual pile will be dominated by those things which were commonly gotten rid of.”

“We’ll hypothesize, not suppose,” said Trollop.

Elnor rolled his eyes.

All around them were these piles, enormous piles, some the size of mountains. The mountain of chairs was the only one they were close enough to identify; the others were so far away that even magically enhanced elven eyes were put under strain. In addition to the mountains, the plane of garbage had quite a few large lakes, each of a different color. But between these features, the terrain was composed of various objects, broken toys and carrot tops, pillows and rusted farming equipment. It wasn’t clear why these things weren’t in piles of their own.

Elnor had been a scholar of other planes of existence for quite some time. The elemental planes had been well-studied, to the extent that there were a number of outposts set up by the various kingdoms of the world for exploitation and trade. Then there was m-space, where all the energy to balance out mass-energy equations had come from. For a brief period of time, there had been an attempt to weaponize m-space, but it hadn’t taken long for the United Council of Kingdoms to call for a blanket ban on all research into those areas. Elnor had been a victim of that ban, not because any of his research had been destroyed, but because it freed up a number of academics who worked within his field. It had taken him some time to find a niche that no one had previously cared about, and that was the plane of garbage.

He had thought that his research would be purely theoretical, concerned only with the planar signatures of various removal spells, but the King of Langdon had taken an interest. It wasn’t too long before a team was assembled and shot into the plane of garbage with surprisingly little fanfare. Of course, the king wasn’t such a lover of knowledge that he would bring together and outfit the expedition just for that purpose alone; they were in the plane of garbage to figure out how to exploit it.

“So, where do you suppose the mountain of misplaced gold is?” asked Branthick.

“It wouldn’t be misplaced,” said Trollop. “Things don’t, to our knowledge, end up here because they’re simply lost, they have to be deliberately sent here via one of the spells we’ve identified. If Elnor’s theory --”

“Hypothesis, you said,” replied Elnor.

“If Elnor’s hypothesis is correct,” continued Trollop, “Then this place should be dominated by things that are so useless that people would rather erase them from existence than recycle, reuse, or sell them. Surely the plane will be filled with many things that magic can make practically for free, like these chairs, but who would erase gold?”

“Books,” grumbled Krunk. Everyone looked at him, but he didn’t bother to elaborate.

“It’s true that books are valuable,” said Trollop slowly. “But the same problem remains, in that valuable things are unlikely to be thrown away. Who would erase books?”

“Oh, plenty of people,” said Branthick. “Books are the first casualty of ideological revolutions. Granted, they’re typically burned, as that makes for a better scene, but I still think we might be able to find a pile somewhere, if they’re not interspersed between the mountains.” He looked around him. “All in all, this garbage is remarkably well-preserved.”

“Perhaps this place offer some resistance oxidation?” asked Elnor. “I’d noticed that myself, I’d thought there would be more rot and rust. It looks practically pristine.”

“I would think those chairs would be something of a fire hazard as well,” said Trollop. “It would be simple enough to test …”

“Absolutely not,” said Elnor. “We’ll test flammability in a controlled manner later on, when we have a proper camp set up with an area for controlled experimentation.” He touched the gemstone at this throat. “We don’t even know whether the air is breathable. I won’t risk igniting the air if this plane has never known flame before. We need an analysis of composition.”

“Well at any rate,” said Branthick. “Do you suppose we might be able to make camp at the base of a different, more profitable mountain? I think our trusty guard has the right of it and books might sit at the intersection between profitable and present.”

They walked together across the valleys of the plane of garbage, getting close enough to the other mountains to see what they were composed of. There was a speckled off-white mountain full of eggshells, a flat brown mountain of dung, and an enormous grey mountain that they eventually realized was composed of regular old rock, most likely removed from the prime material in the course of magic-assisted mining. They had no luck in finding anything valuable, nor in finding the theorized mountain of books.

While the plane had an ambient light to it, it had no sun, so presumably there would be no night, only day. Eventually they made camp in the valley of two mountains, using magic to pack down the trash so that they would have a place to set up their tents. Driving stakes into the ground was a different matter altogether, since there was no firm earth to keep the stakes grounded, only broken furniture and ripped clothing. Trollop set up her testing equipment some ways away and got to work, while Elnor began making a map from memory. Krunk, their guard, had no real purpose, so sat with his legs crossed and his eyes closed. That left Branthick to dig through the trash; he was a dwarf, so somewhat accustomed to mining even if it wasn’t his trade.

“Look at this,” he said to Elnor. He had something in his hand.

“Something of value?” asked Elnor.

“I’m afraid it’s only historical value,” replied Branthick. He revealed the leafy top to some plant, clearly cut away from some fruit or vegetable. “I recognized the leaves. It’s from a castwill plant, you see them in pictures all the time. The funny thing is, it went extinct some two hundred years ago when a sickness swept through the plants.”

“So it was perfectly preserved here, just like the others,” replied Elnor. “Curious. Two hundred years is a long time for that to keep.”

“The air is breathable!” called Trollop as she walked toward them.

“This makes no sense,” replied Elnor. “If the air should be anything, it should be toxins that people have gotten rid of. It should be the foulest of poisons.”

“It makes perfect sense,” replied Trollop. “You’re forgetting that while nature abhors a vacuum, industrial processes love them. While it’s true that we’d expect hazardous gases to wind up here, I would expect plenty of fresh, breathable air, which is precisely what we find. Of course, it might also be helped by the various spells that connect to this plane taking along air whenever an object is vanished.”

“Hrm,” said Elnor. “I think I would prefer to keep my gemstone in place.”

“Oh, and oxidation works as expected too,” said Trollop. She snapped her fingers and flames licked into place with the help of some minor spell. “I lit a few of the things we brought with us on fire, then a few pieces of refuse.” She snapped again and the flame went out.

“Then where does this preservative effect come from?” asked Elnor.

“Time,” said Krunk.

They all looked at him, but he didn’t elaborate.

“Demiplanes,” said Branthick. “Some of them have a variable flow of time. Preservation can work by halting the relevant processes, but if you were a god who had no compunctions about being brutish, you might simply half time itself instead. That castwill plant is two hundred years old … but if time moves slower here, it might only have been laying there for a few hours.”

“Then everyone we know is dead,” replied Trollop.

“Elves are exceptionally long-lived,” replied Elnor. “So, perhaps not everyone. But at the very least we’d be reporting back to the great-great-grandson of the king who assigned this task to us. At any rate, I doubt that the solution to the preservation conundrum is time dilation, because if time really were moving at a rate of weeks per second, we would expect to have seen a great many objects coming in from the prime material. Instead, we have seen none.”

“That’s almost as ominous as seeing a lot of them,” said Branthick. “None … you had a big long list of spells and effects that touched this plane. How many egg shells do you think come in every day? We spent an hour walking past that mountain and there wasn’t a single one. This place is nearly devoid of sound. It’s dead and sterile.”

“But it shouldn’t be,” replied Trollop. “Organic processes work as expected. So does oxidation. There should be mold everywhere, not to mention mountains on fire.”

“Is anyone else starting to get a little bit scared?” asked Branthick.

“The natural world is ours for exploring,” said Elnor. “It just happens to be more mysterious than we once gave it credit for.”

There followed some discussion about whether or not they should cast the return spell early, but they still hadn’t found any resources that were truly exploitable, which had been their mandate from the king. Whether or not they were experiencing time dilation was a concern, but they reasoned that if they were, the damage had almost certainly already been done. As for what Trollop called the Organizing Entity, her name for what might as well have been a God of the Plane of Garbage, if such a thing existed, it hadn’t come for them yet.

Elnor kept watch, since he was the only one among them that didn’t need sleep. While the others slept, he made notes. The light was still as bright as daylight, of course; he was thankful for that though, since he wasn’t sure that he could stomach being in this place with a dark, star-less sky.

If m-space was the font of all matter and energy used for any bit of magic in the prime material plane, then the plane of garbage was the drain down which all unwanted matter and energy flowed. There had once been a theory that it was all m-space, that the infinite plane of energy was both fountainhead and basin. Elnor had proven them wrong. The king had forbid him from publication, a sensible measure given that the expedition was to be funded through whatever exploitation of resources they could find, but afterward Elnor would have his paper read by every intellectual of note. Despite the eerie nature of the plane of garbage, that gave him a warm feeling of satisfaction. He filled his notes with his musings on what might be beneath the upper crust of junk, the conceptual framework for how items were segregated, and a rough sketch of what a planar outpost would look like. By the time the others woke, he was quite pleased with himself.

After eight hours of sleep, they started off again, mapping their way as they went and trying to find something that would make their visit worth the king’s money. There was a brief discussion about phosphorus production when they passed by an immense lake of urine, but the the grotesque nature of the lake derailed their talks quite easily, and besides that, none of them knew enough about phosphorus to know whether it would be worth the effort. Elnor marked it down on the map anyhow, in the hopes that it would one day count for something. He was thankful that his charm kept the smell from his nostrils.

Going by the pocketwatch that Trollop had brought along, it was just past noon when they found the mountain of books. The air had been still and sterile when they’d first arrived, but now there was a slight wind, which sent papers swirling like leaves.

“Well, of course most of them are going to be books that nobody wants,” said Elnor.

“But some will be books that only one or two people didn’t want,” replied Branthick. The historian rubbed his hands together and smiled. “This is a treasure trove of well-preserved knowledge. Just think of the things we could learn about past civilizations!”

“I don’t think that the king spent money on scholars so he could spend more money on scholars,” said Trollop.

It was at this point that Elnor’s eye was drawn to some movement -- not on the mountain, but beside him. Krunk was pulling out a scroll from his padded armor. With little fanfare, he began to read from it.

“Why does Krunk have a scroll?” asked Elnor. The others turned to look at Krunk, who hadn’t stopped reading. “Krunk, why do you have a scroll?”

“What’s going on here?” asked Branthick. “Should we stop him?”

Krunk held the scroll in one hand. The other he let fall to his side, resting on the pommel of his sword. He was the only one with a weapon. Magic was an option, certainly, but Elnor had never been terribly skilled at combat magic, and he imagined that Krunk was hiding a number of enchantments.

“It’s a divination,” said Branthick, who had been listening intently to the syllables. “I’m not sure what it’s trying to find, but it’s quite precise and close ranged.”

“Ij-So-To-Uh-Ed-Ji-Ack-Ur-Va-Ih-Oeg-On-Ne-Gi-Kru-Nu-Ap-Tra,” Krunk finished. His pronunciation was surprisingly flawless. As soon as the last syllable left his lips, a green line sprang forth from his chest, pointing straight up the mountain. He gave a grunt at that, tossed the spent scroll aside, and began trudging forward, following the line.

“Any idea what the big guy is doing?” asked Trollop.

“He came here looking for something,” said Elnor. “But … he was attached to this expedition by the king, so it we be more proper to say that the king sent us here looking for something.”

“Not profit then,” said Branthick. “If it were profit, the king would have told us. If we’re here at the pile of books … it must be forbidden knowledge then.”

“That was the whole point of this trip,” said Elnor with sudden dismay. “That’s why there was so much secrecy, such a lack of fanfare. The king is after something.”

“Ten silvers says it’s m-space,” replied Trollop. The three of them were still watching their half-orc guard clamber up the mountain of books, causing spills as books slipped down behind him. He was sturdy on his feet though, and followed the blue line coming from his chest unerringly.

“Why m-space?” asked Elnor.

“The United Council of Kingdoms decided to ban all research into weaponizing it,” replied Branthick. “Their task force was authorized to do a full audit on every member kingdom, and you know what sort of magical power that entails. They went in with psycho-surgeons to remove knowledge from the heads of wizards, not enough to cripple incidental research, but enough to put a full stop on m-space weaponization. When the dust settled, UCK had set all research efforts back to square one, and all the kingdoms had agreed not to go opening up that bottle of worms again. If m-space contains literally infinite energy, opening it up could destroy the entire prime material and everyone in it. UCK’s efforts were one of the strongest possible responses to existential threat, carried out with a precision that was laudable. Hundreds of thousands of wizard-hours of work were destroyed for the good of all sentient life.”

“Except that instead of being destroyed, they were erased,” said Trollop. “Shit, we should have seen this coming.”

“You mean to tell me that the king means to restart his efforts at weaponization?” asked Elnor. They watched Krunk move further up the mountain. “If that’s what he’s after, we can’t allow it to happen.”

“What are you proposing?” asked Trollop. “We use our meager combat skills to disarm and disable him, then return home? We could blow the whistle, I suppose, alert UCK to the plan so that they can come in and close this loophole. A sufficiently large fireball aimed at this mountain would do the trick.”

“I doubt our ability to stop Krunk,” said Branthick. “He was chosen for this task for a reason. And … I hate to say it, but do you think he would allow us to return home, knowing what we know?”

“No,” said Elnor, “I suppose not.”

By the time Krunk started to make his way down the mountain, the scientists had come to a decision. They had readied what spells they knew for fighting, weak though they were. Krunk was carrying an extradimensional sack, presumably filled with the forbidden knowledge that the United Council of Kingdoms had worked so hard to destroy.

“Stop,” said Elnor. He held up one hand, which was wreathed in fire, ready to unleash a fireball. “Empty the sack.” He prayed that the half-orc would listen. The man didn’t seem inclined to kill them, else he would have done it before reading his scroll. Elnor wondered precisely what orders the king had given.

“No,” said Krunk. With no movement on his part, his blade rose from its sheath and nestled itself in his hand. Any chance of a conversation was cut short when Krunk sprang across the uneven ground at lightning speed, right toward Trollop.

Elnor launched his fireball, but the half-orc deflected it perfectly with his blade, something Elnor hadn’t even known was possible. It landed among the books, lighting them on fire. Branthick’s lightning bolt came next, but Krunk didn’t even bother with it, letting it hit him and splash against his armor to no seeming effect, thanks to some hidden magical enchantment underneath. Before Trollop could cast her spell, Krunk had advanced too far. The first stroke of his sword sliced through her hand, causing a strangled cry that aborted whatever she had been attempting. The second slice of his sword cut halfway into her throat, leaving blood to spill freely to the ground.

It was two on one then, as Trollop clutched desperately (and futilely) at her neck. Elnor stood in shock at the speed and precision of their would-be guard, but Branthick was preparing a some new spell. That was likely why Krunk chose him for next. Before Branthick could even get a second syllable out, Krunk had thrown his sword straight forward. It landed in Branthick’s stomach, driving so far in that only the hilt stopped it from going straight out the other side. Branthick fell, clutching his wound. The sword drew itself from him and flew backward to once again rest in Krunk’s hand.

Krunk approached Elnor, a scholar with no training. Elnor closed his eyes, knowing that this was to be his ignoble end. He listened to the sound of Krunk’s footsteps and waited for the swishing sound of a blade cutting air. This was a coward’s way to go, but Elnor could admit that he was a coward.

“Wait!” came a cry from the ground. It was Branthick’s gruff voice, partly choked in blood. “I know why nothing’s decayed!”

Elnor opened his eyes and saw Krunk staring down at the mortally wounded dwarf. Blood was trickling out of Branthick’s mouth, but he had propped himself up with one hand; the other held his gut wound.

“Speak,” said Krunk.

“We were wrong about time dilation,” said Branthick. He was panting, each sentence a strain on him. “It’s not that time moves slower here, it’s that this place is disconnected from time. That’s why there’s no fires, no molds, it’s because no matter what year you send your garbage in from, it always ends up at the beginning of the plane’s timeline.”

“Nonsense,” replied Krunk. His face was blank, expressionless.

“It’s true,” said Branthick. “It’s true!” With his bloodied hand he gestured to where Elnor’s fireball had landed; the books were blazing out of control. “Stay in this place another day and you’ll see, it’s all breaking down, the reason it was pristine is because this plane had only existed from the moment we stepped foot on it. But that’s why you must stop!” He coughed once, bringing fresh blood to his lips. He was pale now. “The plane is disconnected from time, but we haven’t seen anyone else here, we haven’t found any artifacts from the future, only the past, don’t you see? There is no future! If you bring those books through, the world won’t exist long enough for anything to land in the plane of garbage!”

“Silence,” said Krunk. He threw his sword again; this time it pierced Branthick’s skull.

“H-h-he’s right,” replied Elnor. “And it wouldn’t j-j-just be the prime material, it would be the totality of the multiverse, they’re all connected to each other. Y-y-you have to l-l-let me live, to tell the king, I won’t say anything to anyone, just let me live.” He didn’t know whether he believed Branthick’s theory, but his mind was too occupied to poke holes.

“No,” said Krunk. His sword flew through the air again. It did not miss.


End file.
